


Gifted

by missmichellebelle



Category: Glee
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Superheroes/Superpowers, General, M/M, Telekinesis, Telepathy
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-07-28
Updated: 2012-07-28
Packaged: 2017-12-20 11:20:23
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,589
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/886648
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/missmichellebelle/pseuds/missmichellebelle
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>"Let’s try this instead. Tell me about yourself, Blaine."</p><p>Blaine’s mouth goes dry. This isn’t about where Blaine was born or who his parents are (were, he reminds himself, who they were) and they both know it. Blaine grips the edge of the table and he can see the anxiousness knot tightly in Kurt’s shoulders. He can understand; Blaine once saw Puck dig his fingers through steel as if it was butter.</p><p>"Telekinesis," he says with a hush and Kurt’s mouth thins into a line. Because he knows.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Gifted

**Author's Note:**

> Written for Klaine AU Friday.

The spoon moves in a gentle circle, clinking against the ceramic of the mug in a steady rhythm. Blaine can’t help but watch it, breath bated just short of amazement. It shouldn’t be so amazing to him, but he knows what would happen if he was the one stirring the spoon. He has ropes and balls of twisted metal in his own silverware drawer as proof.

"You must be Blaine."

He looks up and over to the door and tries not to let the surprise register on his face. He tries not to  _think_  anything. He knows where he is and knows what this man is capable of.

He just hadn’t expected him to be so  _young_.

The stories had always sounded more like legend, even if the facts were far from fantastical. Hearing of a Gifted with complete control, however, wasn’t exactly common. There had been attempts to form schools and academies in the past. Blaine had seen the old newspaper clippings and the abandoned, half destroyed buildings. People trying to control something that doesn’t want to be controlled.

Some became heroes and some became villains but most of them became social pariahs. Hermits. They called them the Gifted but their  _differences_  were far from gifts.

The man before him now had been spoken of in whispers and on slips of paper. No one knows how or why he’s become the way he is, they just know that he  _is_  and it’s all any of them want to be.

Blaine fumbles for a moment, tearing his eyes away from the constant circles of the spoon and standing up. The chair knocks back but it rights itself almost immediately; the fact that it doesn’t split apart into wood is astonishing.

"You must be K." Blaine’s voice is all raw nerves, he can hear it.

"Kurt. I understand the need to have a codename for me out there, but… It’s just Kurt." He strides to the other side of the desk, his chair moving in behind him as he sits down. He’s so  _young_  that it leaves Blaine without words. So young and so incredibly—Blaine stops, focusing on the spoon again.

Constant, constant, constant.

"There’s no need for that," Kurt says softly, and Blaine’s eyes flash up to meet his alarmingly bright blue ones. “I’m not going to read your mind."

"You—I mean, that’s…"

 _Complete and utter control_.

It’s one thing to hear the stories, it’s another to see them become true before your very eyes. Blaine can’t help but think of Brittany and the wild, dazed look in her eyes as she answers voices nobody else can hear. It had driven her insane.

"Unless that’s easier for you?" Kurt’s coffee moves into his hands and the spoon rests itself down on a napkin. He sips it, watching Blaine with quiet contemplation.

"No, please… Please don’t."

 _He won’t read my mind. He can, and he won’t_.

Blaine falls with little to no grace back into his chair.

Kurt waits, sipping his coffee and it strikes Blaine how incredibly odd all of this was. Before everything, before he was a Gifted, when things were  _normal_  as the rest of the world classifies it, he remembers propriety. He understand the strangeness of sitting in someone’s home, their private space, all the while being strangers.

An apology is on the tip of his lips, but instead all he says is, “How?"

Kurt’s lips quirk in a smile and he sets down his coffee manually, his fingers resting around the girth of the mug.

"Let’s try this instead. Tell me about yourself, Blaine."

Blaine’s mouth goes dry. This isn’t about where Blaine was born or who his parents are ( _were_ , he reminds himself, who they  _were_ ) and they both know it. Blaine grips the edge of the table and he can see the anxiousness knot tightly in Kurt’s shoulders. He can understand; Blaine once saw Puck dig his fingers through steel as if it was butter.

"Telekinesis," he says with a hush and Kurt’s mouth thins into a line. Because he  _knows_.

"How old were you?" Kurt asks, his voice suddenly much gentler. Blaine chews his bottom lip.

"Twelve."

It’s embarrassing. It’s been seven years and it’s… Kurt doesn’t know but it should be obvious by the shame that comes over Blaine’s face.

"I was two," Kurt adds, and Blaine looks at him in alarm. “I destroyed so many teddy bears." He says it so easily, as if those teddy bears couldn’t have been something else, as if things couldn’t have been so much  _worse_. “I got my telepathy at eight—"

“ _Eight?_ " Blaine can’t stop himself. He’s looking at this man who can’t be much older or younger than himself, and he’s—it can’t even register in Blaine’s mind. It had taken Brittany two weeks to lose her mind, and Kurt, he…

"Eight." Blaine can see the way Kurt’s fingers tighten around his mug. “Shortly after my mother died."

Blaine doesn’t know which one to apologize for.

"Were… Your parents, were they…"

"No. Completely human, but…" Kurt smiles, looking down at the wooden grain of his desk. Blaine feels an empty echo in his chest cavity and doesn’t think about it. It’s silent then and Blaine begins to wonder why he came. He hasn’t been through what Kurt has been through, hasn’t had nearly the same amount of time, maybe he just needs another ten years…

 _Ten years_.

The number makes him feel sick.

"Pick this up for me."

Blaine looks back at Kurt and stares at the slim, completely perfect piece of chalk between his fingers. Blaine knows not to reach forward, but he feels a sudden rush of dread.

It slips from Kurt’s fingers easily, hanging in the air and Kurt watches Blaine intently. He isn’t looking at the chalk, even though Blaine has to, but concentrates on Blaine’s face.

"Relax."

The piece of chalk wobbles and bursts apart in a cloud of dust, falling to the desk in dozens of tiny pieces. Kurt still doesn’t look at it and Blaine feels his face heat with embarrassment. It’s quiet for a few moments as Kurt sweeps up the chalk into his steady hands.

"Do you hate it?" Kurt asks quietly.

"Doesn’t everyone?" Blaine bites out. If there was a way to go back, to erase it all, he would. But you can’t change what you are.

"No."

Blaine stares at Kurt.

"No?"

"No, not everyone hates it." Kurt tilts his head to the side. “People hate it because they can’t control it."

"And you can control it, congratulations." Blaine feels a spike in his temper, forgetting where he is, who he’s with, and what losing his cool could result in.

"I can. Because the reason people can’t control it is because they hate it."

Blaine snorts, unamused. The vase of flowers nearby starts to rattle and too quickly Kurt’s hand is on Blaine’s. It surprises him enough that the vase (and the chair, and the lamp) settle.

"It’s a part of you, and you hate it. You don’t try to understand it. You try to act like it doesn’t exist. If you ignore your hand, it won’t go away, Blaine."

He makes it sound so easy, like accepting this part of himself is the easiest thing in the world.

"They’re just muscles that we have to learn to move the way we want them to. In fact, telekinesis is just like having another hand. In fact, it can be like having 100 other hands, but I think we should focus on just having just one right now." Kurt pulls out another piece of chalk and sets it on the desk. “You concentrate too hard. Pick that piece of chalk up with your fingers."

Blaine does, easily.

"Did you have to think about it?"

"No."

"So why do you think about it when you do it with your mind?"

Blaine opens his mouth and then closes it.

"I… I have to, don’t I?"

Kurt smiles and picks up his spoon, holding it up between them with his fingers.

"If something is second nature, it’s always second nature. Even if you’re across the house on a phone call. That doesn’t mean you can’t stir a spoon in a cup of coffee."

It had never been about using hands. Blaine has hands, two hands, and then he has his mind. His mind has always been the thing that moved without restraint, that grabbed with more force than he has in his entire body. It can crush chalk, metal,  _bones_ …

"Set the chalk down and pick it up again. But look at me."

Kurt is still holding his hand across the table, his palm warm and grounding. Blaine looks at Kurt, straight in his eyes, and doesn’t look down. He’s never moved something without looking now and he wishes he could close his eyes at least. But he looks at Kurt, at the serious yet encouraging undertones in his eyes, and steadies his breathing.

For once, he doesn’t just imagine an all encompassing force. It isn’t something unimaginable, something too abstract to be perceived. He sees fingers, a palm, skimming the surface of the desk until he can grip the chalk between invisible fingertips.

He lifts it up until it’s floating between their eyes. A third, invisible arm. It isn’t perfect, and it’s strange, and he’s still concentrating too hard (can see the small divots being ground into the sides of the chalk) but it’s  _something_.

Kurt smiles and Blaine smiles back.

"Very promising."


End file.
